Archive for July, 2008

If Madonna and JT lived in Cape Town, and their watches were set to African Time, their 4-minutes would be more like 4-hours. And instead of saving the world they would be witness to one crumbling down around them. I can testify that in the space of 4-hours I embraced my hangover from the night before and decided that it was time to head back to Jo’burg a week earlier than anticipated. After a watershed collection of new contracts and advertisers, the sourness at the back of my throat wasn’t the bile from the night before (… yes sacrificing at the Bowl of Bacchus after a heavy night drinking!) but the petulant behaviour of an adult used to being the centre of attention.

And while it wasn’t worth losing a friend over, somewhere inside I realised that this is the change of the friendship anyway. Over the past few months I have seen his manoeuvrings and slowly her circle of friends is being replaced with his own equally spoiled dilatants. A closed circle who bolster his ego rather than support her needs as an individual. But in life we all make choices necessary to our circumstances and could never begrudge her changing priorities. I have adjusted my expectations accordingly and realise where our two roads were once similar, have now diverged in the Tokai forest. But, as I sat on the plane going home the same emotion I had for Cape Town has imperceptibly changed.

Perhaps that change is my own making as well? The restlessness that has been pervasive over the past few months has shifted to a sense of living on borrowed time. What that exactly means I’m unsure but it’s there … that any minute the piper is going to ask for his dues and I have not enough to pay him. I felt this as I lay in the arms of a software engineer after meeting at his offices’ drinks party a few hours before. While he was everything that I was looking for that night I couldn’t really find any pleasure in his sensuality. We lay there, talking about nothing and everything, just the timbre of his voice was enough to lull me into a deep sleep that lasted until just after nine the next morning.

As I stood in the shower, the hot water felt like Niagara Falls on my shoulders. Fair enough my gentle giant had spent a good few minutes massaging my neck in the shower before getting out to make us breakfast leaving me feeling lighter than I had felt in a long while. As I stood there I got to thinking how they say that opposites attract but they never say for how long. Should the relationship savvy person still stoke the fires of passion with the kindling of work and friends or should we simply be satisfied with a romance that sizzles? As I got into the waiting car I couldn’t help but wonder without sharing your worlds can even the hottest relationship stop cold?

But as soon as I landed my own reality came back to me and I was acutely aware that now is the time to act if I want this feeling to go away. I have a sense of where I want to be and so I find myself in transition again building on ruins of the past, except this time the foundations are more solid than mere words or promises that evaporate like the dew at the dawn. I’ve realised that in coming home to the middle of a Highveld winter, the warmest place is where there are people who love you. And while some love is enough, there is a certain kind that only a lover can give, and you can take. So like the blooms on a cherry tree, I am patient for that moment where I know Persepolis will be mine.

I’ve long come to realise my fault in preferring married men, or that pseudo-straight player who ogles tits but fondles boys, the principle of no-strings-attached fun would stay uncomplicated and undemanding. That between all the self-abuse of dirty deeds done dirt cheap on one-night stands somehow I’d find something real in the daylight. Instead I chose to accept that when he said ‘I’m never going to leave my wife for you’ he really meant ‘You’re just not worth losing that second income.’

And so I made a promise to myself that when a guy was physically, or emotionally unavailable, I was not only turn but run in the opposite direction. So imagine my surprise when the Bradley Cooper-esq guy told me that he was once engaged. Nearly falling off my bar stool without splashing any of my vodka martini on the floor I picked myself and my jaw off the ground and waited for him to share more from that mysterious X-File of his.

The drinks were part celebration/part relief after a totally public demonstration, short of a civil registry or gift list, of coupling. Our individual needs converged and we both decided to take that certain test where a negative response is preferred. His being a renewable insurance clause – mine a guilty conscience. After months of whoring around with a stiff cock rather than rigid morals the time had come to take control and the matter into hand, so to speak.

His explanation of their break-up was shorter than a long sip from his imported beer. As I watched him from the corner of my eye, my thoughts drowned slowly in my swirling drink and I thought not to prod him about it further. Even though we are still stuck somewhere in the hinterlands between lovers and friend there are some things that should remain private and never shared. If our having sex kept the friendship fresh and exciting then it was best to keep my heart safe without thinking of his.

But later that night I got to thinking about safe sex or lack thereof and it struck me as odd how when only our physical health is at risk do we follow certain guidelines to protect ourselves. But what about our emotional lives? Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a little pamphlet to warn us what unsafe behaviour might be high-risk to ourselves or our relationships? And even if you take all the precautions and emotionally try to protect yourself, when you crawl in bed with someone, is sex ever safe?

Safely tucked away in his antique poster bed reading, the look on his face from the drive back hadn’t changed even after he emerged from a hot shower, and I knew what he was thinking. Just as I tended to bite my bottom lip when I struggled with something, he frowned. Desperate to find a balance between keeping it bottled up with the paper perfect person or gushing it all out with my last foray into dating I decided that following my instincts would be best. They said ‘shut up!’ And so I did.

Ever since we had met so many months back he had always stated that our lives were different. How or why always managed to escape me but then, in the honesty of the midnight hour, it dawned on me. While he had no problem being with a guy sexually his fear was that others would. And because of that I could never move from just being a friend to being his boyfriend. At least not to the people who mattered most to him. In him I had wanted a friend but the love of the autumn had turned him into a lover that could never last until the spring. I realise now, now more than ever, I need to be looking towards the future. A future I fear will forever be haunted by the choices I make today.